The film-makers behind this Dalai Lama documentary must be cursing the timing of its release, just after that video sullied his godlike status as hero of world peace and symbol of Tibet’s resistance against China. Narrated with dignified gravitas by Hugh Bonneville, its selling point is an interview with the Dalai Lama, speaking on film for the first time about his escape from Tibet in 1959, aged 23. Though to be honest, describing the encounter as an interview is pushing it. These days, what you get with the rock star Nobel prize-winning spiritual leader is an “audience with the Dalai Lama”; the interviewer’s role is to sit in rapt silence.
So, with a cheeky grin, the 87-year-old relates the story of his escape from Tibet. Rambling a little, he describes disguising himself as a soldier to slip out of his palace in the dead of night, sneaking past Chinese guards; his journey to freedom took two weeks, travelling across the Himalayas on foot at night to reach Dharamshala in India to set up a government-in-exile. He’s speaking to British BBC journalist Rani Singh, whose uncle was an Indian official sent to the bring the Dalai Lama to safety; the two men reunite at the end.
